Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Tracking busy genes to get at cancer

    By identifying which genes are overactive in certain breast tumors, researchers have discovered a genetic signature that could help doctors predict if and when a woman's cancer might spread to her lungs.

    By Nathan Seppa
  2. Health & Medicine

    Potent Medicine

    Drugs now used to treat erectile dysfunction might soon assume multiple roles in managing heart disease and other conditions, including some that affect women and infants.

    By Ben Harder
  3. Health & Medicine

    Can Chocolate Fight Diabetes, Too?

    Consuming flavonoid-rich dark chocolate could not only lower blood pressure and cholesterol but also improve the body's processing of sugar.

    By Ben Harder
  4. Health & Medicine

    New Carrier: Common tick implicated in spread of fever

    The brown dog tick is capable of spreading the bacterium that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever.

    By Nathan Seppa
  5. Health & Medicine

    Sun Struck: Data suggest skin cancer epidemic looms

    The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers in young adults is mushrooming, possibly heralding an epidemic in follow-up cancers during the coming decades.

    By Janet Raloff
  6. Health & Medicine

    After terror, moms’ stress affects kids

    Infants born to women who developed posttraumatic stress disorder during pregnancy have unusually low concentrations of the hormone cortisol.

    By Ben Harder
  7. Health & Medicine

    Siccing Fungi on Malaria

    Two independent research teams have found that fungi can kill mosquitoes or reduce the efficiency with which they transmit the malaria parasite.

    By Ben Harder
  8. Health & Medicine

    Virus Attack on Cancer: Heat makes neglected technology work better

    Adding heat sensitizes tumor cells to the effects of a genetically modified virus, which then can kill them.

    By Nathan Seppa
  9. Health & Medicine

    From Famine, Schizophrenia: Starvation gives birth to personality disorder

    Women who go severely hungry during early pregnancy face twice the normal risk of having a child who develops schizophrenia in adulthood.

    By Ben Harder
  10. Health & Medicine

    Coming Soon—Broccoli and Peach ‘Seaweeds’

    California researchers are developing fruit- and vegetable-based surrogates for a paperlike seaweed product, typically used in sushi, to brighten foods and infuse them with all-natural nutrients.

    By Janet Raloff
  11. Health & Medicine

    King George III should have sued

    The madness of England's King George III may have been partly due to arsenic poisoning.

    By Nathan Seppa
  12. Health & Medicine

    Lyme microbe forms convenient bond with tick protein

    The bacterium that causes Lyme disease commandeers a gene in the deer tick, inducing overproduction of a salivary protein that the bacterium uses to escape immune detection once it's inside a mammal.

    By Nathan Seppa